I found none.
Next I looked up each Raleigh. The Illinois town was tiny, with 700 people in the 2010 census. The Raleigh in Mississippi was the county seat of Smith County, with a population of 1,462. Raleigh, North Dakota, counted a mere 92 people in the last census. The Raleigh in West Virginia turned out to be a county, with a population of close to 80,000 living in cities with names such as Lester, Mabscott, and Rhodell. I’d never heard of any of them.
Raleigh, Canada, was a tiny place on the far eastern edge of the country. The population was somewhere in the 200s.
All small areas. Not places you’d think a large company would be headquartered.
I leaned back in my chair and closed my eyes. Exhaustion spread through my limbs. The Raleigh that Morton mentioned most likely referred to the North Carolina city. Still, none of his companies seemed to have ties to that area.
My mind chugged, unable to think anymore. My body began to relax . . .
My head fell forward.
I jerked up. Threw an anxious look over my shoulder, but saw mere empty house. Mom was quiet. Sometimes, even with her door closed, I could hear her snore. Not tonight.
Was it my imagination, or did the night . . . vibrate? I ran both hands over my face, as if to scrub clear thinking back into my brain. My gaze landed on the gun. Scary thing. Why had I taken it out of its box? Men with weapons had come to my house, yes. But I’d given them the flash drive—and they left. If they wanted anything more, if they wanted to hurt me, they’d have done it right then.
But what if those two men had watched my house and seen me and Mom drive off in a deputy’s car? They’d wonder why we’d talked to law enforcement. If we’d told the sheriff’s department something we hadn’t told them.
Would Samuelson and Rutger come back to find out?
I flexed my shoulders, rolled my head from side to side. My muscles wouldn’t loosen.
An intense desire to hear Emily’s voice swept over me. I glanced at the clock. Past 1:00 a.m. Too late to call, despite what she’d told me. Besides, I couldn’t let her know how scared I felt. No need to frighten her more than she already was.
The sheriff’s surveillance car. Was it still outside?
In the darkened living room I edged back a curtain and looked down the street. The van I’d seen hours earlier was still there.
I wandered to the middle of the room and stood there, one hand to my neck. This couldn’t go on—I needed sleep. Another full workweek began just hours from now. Did I think I could do this night after night?
Dorothy
. I’d have to tell Mom’s caretaker everything when she arrived. She’d need to be extra careful, on the lookout. I would give her Harcroft’s and Wade’s numbers.
Really, Hannah, you’re making too much out of this.
How was I supposed to work, worrying about Mom here at home?
A prayer flitted through my head—for the sheriff’s department to catch those two men soon. Then everything would be back to normal.
I found myself again in my room, staring with longing at my bed. The computer monitor scrolled through old pictures. I couldn’t find the energy to turn the thing off.
My feet took me toward the bed, then of their own accord veered to the desk. I picked up the gun. Carried it to the living room. Only my bedroom desk lamp remained on in the house. In the near dark, I pulled Mom’s blanket off her rocking chair. Laid my gun on the table beside the sofa. I lay down on the couch and covered myself with the blanket.
If anyone skulked through the front door, or the back, I’d hear them before they got to Mom’s room.
My eyes drifted shut, my brain fuzzing. The unstable world shifted . . . fell away . . .
In the last moment of consciousness I convinced myself we had nothing to worry about.
T
he phone in his pocket buzzed. A high-tech device unknown to the masses, designed by the precise and skilled engineers of FreeNow, the organization he led. Calls untraceable. A mere chosen few had the number. Alex Weyerling, known as Stone by those in the FreeNow organization, pulled out the cell and checked the ID. It was Roz—“Agent Samuelson.”
Stone put the cell to his ear. “Yeah.”
“There’s an issue.”
He stiffened. “What now?” As if a traitor in their midst—on today of all days—wasn’t enough. And not just any traitor.
“The video. She gave us a copy.”
“How do you know?”
Roz told him.
Stone swore. “Why didn’t you get the truth out of her before you left her house?”
“You know why. She told us to leave.”
“She
told
you? The big guys with the guns?” Not to mention they were two of his men with badges. Stone had badges across the country—fake and real. “So you and Tex just
crept
out of there like mice?”
“You said not to blow our cover.”
“I also said not to come out of there without everything we needed!”
Silence.
Stone swore again. “Why, Roz? Just why do you think she would make the choice to keep it?”
“I don’t know.”
Stone punched the wall hard. There was only one reason. She knew something. “You told me she insisted Leringer didn’t tell her anything.”
“She did!”
“Guess what, Roz. She
lied
!”
“Yeah. Apparently. But we’re fixing it.”
“How fast, Roz? How fast?”
“Now. I’m going back. I’ll get her computer, any backup drives, whatever I can get. I’ll take care of it, Stone, I promise you.”
Stone rubbed his shaved head. His gaze drifted over the cluttered apartment. How he hated the place, surrounded by sounds of traffic and neighbors. His fellow Americans going about their futile business, so unaware of what their country had become. Of how the government had taken over every aspect of their lives. Just when their two-year plan was about to change it all,
everything
was going wrong.
“You listen to me, Roz, you’d
better
take care of this.” Stone slitted his eyes. “We’re running out of time. And don’t you leave that house again without finding out what that woman knows and who she’s told. Then take them both out.”
Roz hesitated. “One of ’em’s just an old lady. Doesn’t know half of what she says.”
Stone’s voice turned to steel. “Your point?”
“Nothing.”
Stone gripped the phone, his back hunched. Over a year of engineering. Planning timed to the second. All for the organization now to be at the mercy of a betrayer and a series of wild mistakes. First FreeNow’s computer security specialist, Eddington, had turned traitor at the last minute and rushed the crucial video to Morton Leringer. Then Nooley, sent to intercept Eddington and Leringer before it was too late, failed to get the video back. Now it was in the hands of some woman. And spreading further by the minute.
“Want to know what happened to your friend Nooley, Roz? He’s
dead
. Got a bullet between the eyes.”
Silence.
“That’s what happens to men who fail me. Who fail FreeNow.”
“I hear you.”
“I hope you do. I hope you hear me loud and clear. Because I expect you over here in ninety minutes. I’ll call in one of our techs. He’ll go through that woman’s computer and make sure she hasn’t sent the video anywhere.”
“Yeah, okay.” Fear had crept into Roz’s voice. “Ninety minutes.”
Stone punched off the call and threw his phone on the table.
SPECIAL HOUSE SELECT COMMITTEE INVESTIGATION INTO FREENOW TERRORIST ACTIVITY OF FEBRUARY 25, 2013
SEPTEMBER 16, 2013
TRANSCRIPT
Representative ELKIN MORSE (Chairman, Homeland Security Committee): So you entered the home of Morton Leringer along with his daughter, Cheryl Stein—and found that his alarm was not on. What did you then discover in that home?
Sergeant CHARLES WADE (Sheriff’s Department Coastside): Let me backtrack a little. There is a semicircular driveway in front of the house. As Mrs. Stein and I approached and went up the porch steps, I noticed drops of what appeared to be blood. When we entered the large foyer I saw more drops leading to an office to the right of the foyer. In that office I discovered the body of a man lying on the floor. He’d been beaten and stabbed. We later learned the identity of the victim. Nathan Eddington, a security technician at StarrCom, a company owned by Leringer’s ML Corporation. From that point I declared the house a crime scene, which would entail taping off the property and calling in techs to go through the house thoroughly.
In the meantime I escorted Mrs. Stein through the rest of the house so she could look for anything out of order or missing. I also checked windows and doors. A rear door to the garage had been broken into. It stood ajar, its lock mechanism bent and forced. There did not appear to be anything missing from the house. Other than what I’ve already noted, plus signs of a struggle in the office, it looked as if nothing had been disturbed. Morton Leringer’s car, a Mercedes sedan, still sat in the garage.
MORSE: What did you surmise from this evidence?
WADE: My best theory at the time was that someone had broken into the Leringer home while Leringer and Eddington were meeting in the office. The perpetrator may have surprised the two men. Judging from the defense wounds on Nathan Eddington, I’d say he put up a fight. Leringer was stabbed, but managed to escape. Perhaps he had time to get away while the perpetrator fought with Eddington. Leringer would have been running for his life, but he was already seriously wounded. Rather than head across the large house to his garage for his own car, he chose to go down the front steps to Eddington’s car and drive away. He managed to get some distance down Tunitas Creek Road before wrecking the car.
MORSE: In previous testimony you told this committee the car Morton Leringer was driving at the time of his accident belonged to Nathan Eddington. Correct?
WADE: Yes. We ran the plates after towing away the car.
MORSE: And that . . . Let me check my notes . . . You called Nathan Eddington’s home and spoke with his wife, who confirmed he’d driven the car to work.
WADE: Yes. When I tried to reach Mr. Eddington at his work—StarrCom—I was informed he’d left the office in a hurry and hadn’t told anyone where he was going. That’s the last we knew of his whereabouts until discovering his body. So our theory of a meeting between Eddington and Leringer at Leringer’s house, that meeting being interrupted by the perpetrator, and Leringer escaping in Eddington’s car—it all seemed to fit.
MORSE: How did you explain Leringer’s having Eddington’s car keys?
WADE: Actually that detail points to the crucial, hurried nature of the meeting between Leringer and Eddington. I surmised that in his rush to get into the house, Eddington had left the keys in his car.
MORSE: How would Leringer know they’d been left there?
WADE: I don’t know. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe in his pain and fear he chose to run down the front steps and discovered Eddington’s keys in the car.
MORSE: Mere coincidence in this crucial moment, you’re saying.
WADE: Coincidence, providence—whatever you want to call it. That’s not so unusual. What would be more unusual is Leringer asking Eddington for his car keys while the man was being fatally attacked.
MORSE: My question did not invite sarcasm, Sergeant Wade.
WADE: None was intended.
MORSE: I’ll take that at face value.
Now, circling back to Mrs. Shire. What did the discovery of Nathan Eddington’s body, and your theory of the crime scene, lead you to believe regarding Hannah Shire?
WADE: She’d already given a questionable excuse for being on a rural road where a man lay dying from a stab wound. Now we knew that road led to a house where a break-in and a deadly attack occurred, resulting in the deaths of
two
men.
MORSE: So it’s your testimony that you grew more suspicious of Mrs. Shire.
WADE: Yes.
MORSE: Rather than seeing the evidence as backing up her story.
WADE: The body count had just doubled, Mr. Chairman.
MORSE: Indeed. And with that video being in law enforcement hands, so had the problems for FreeNow. Unless the video was ignored.
WADE: If you are insinuating I purposely ignored that video in order to help FreeNow succeed in their terrorist plot, I categorically deny it. And I resent the accusation.
MORSE: Then explain this:
How
did it not occur to you that the sudden meeting between Leringer and Eddington—and their subsequent murders—may have been related to the video? That Leringer managed to escape with the flash drive from his attacker? And that as he lay dying he struggled with his last breaths to tell a woman who’d come upon the accident about the planned terrorist attack—and even managed to slip the flash drive into her pocket?
How would this not tell you, Sergeant Wade, the importance of that video?
Monday, February 25, 2013
A creak woke me.
My eyes flew open. For a moment my brain failed to remember where I was.
The couch. Gun behind my head on the table. I reached for it.
I lay there, body stiff as lead, head raised. Listening. Maybe I’d just heard Mom.
A horrible vision of shooting her by mistake swept through my mind. Followed by Jeff’s voice: “Don’t hesitate. Or the other guy might get you first.”
Another sound. Coming from my bedroom. A moving of . . . something.
I sat up.
My heart pounded so hard I could not breathe. I dropped my mouth open, struggling to pull in air. The gun in my hand shook.
If someone was in that room, I had to stop him there. Before he moved to Mom’s room.
How did he get in? Not the front door. Had to be the back. Unseen by the sheriff’s deputy out front.
With sheer willpower I stood, legs trembling, knees watery. Both hands gripped the weapon. One step at a time, I eased forward. At the edge of the living room, I stopped. I peered down the hall, through the doorway to my room. It was dimly lit by my desk lamp. I could see the nightstand by my bed, the edge of a bookcase along the wall.